48 History of the English Landed Interest. 



village community of eastern England and tlie tribal com- 

 munity of western England, lie points out, had similar 

 socialistic ideas as regards land. The former belonged to the 

 agricultural period of man's development, the latter rather^ to 

 the earlier pastoral period. The former was a settled serfdom 

 under a lordship, the latter a community of blood relationship 

 under a primus inter pares. The former possessed, approxi- 

 mately, individual equahty of land distribution, the latter, 

 household equality of land distribution. When first discovered 

 to the modern theorist, the former was undergoing a pro- 

 gressive stage from general slaver}', the latter neither a 

 progressive nor a retrogressive stage. Neither were radically 

 affected by either Roman, English, or Norman invasions, but 

 both were gradually destroyed by the growth of individual 

 enterprise ; yet the germ of each still survives in a recog- 

 nisable form — such, for example, as the Lammas lands, terrace 

 cultivation, and common rights. 



Other theorists, having discovered traces of a similar polity 

 in different parts of Europe and the rest of the globe, ascribe 

 the phenomena to some common ethnic stem. Thus Sir Henry 

 Maine advances the idea that they are derived from the 

 primitive Aryan race, and points to the India of to-day for 

 a parallel case. 



Mr. Gomme,"- following on the same lines as this latter theor- 

 ist, but recognising the distinction of Mr. Seebohm between a 

 community under a lord and a community under a primus inter 

 ptares, ascribes the existence of the former to the Aryan people, 

 and that of the latter to its contact with a pre-Aryan, or, as it 

 is now termed, Iberian people. Just as, he reasons,^ in the 

 India of the present day there are original village communities 

 not Aryan in origin, but formed by a pre-Aryan race which, 

 when conquered by tribal Aryans, became subjected to the 

 latter's system of overlordship ; so in the Britain of pre-historic 



^ Tlie word " rather " is necessary because Seebolini lias produced 

 evidence of agricultural practices in early Welsh history. Seebohm 

 Vtll. Commun., p. 185. 



* Gomme, Vill. Comviun., passim. 



' Id. Ibid., ch. iv. 



